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Hi Frank,This is really ambitious on your behalf. Are you aware that editing is open ended, meaning anyone can add/modify/delete published web pages? If you're comfortable with this, here's a URL for a free tutorial :

I added some shell content for you, probably enough to get started. On Main Page just set up some examples of Brands... Each brand can have its own title and then individuals can edit at their discretion. Using the plus sign new categories can be created. Should be interesting to see if anyone can figure out a good way to organize.

I am no expert with Wikipedia...my perspective has been that it is an encylopedia...so I don't know if you can nest categories or if one can use "Pages" to achieve sub categories. I have no idea if there is a chat or IM function either.

I am pretty sure that the sysadmin can set it up such that not everyone can just edit content but users could submit for approval. On the otherhand their must be some "roll back" function if editing is near realtime.

I do, fortunately, know how to Wiki. On the main page, http://www.wikipiano.com/mediawiki/index.php it links to the new Piano brands page. Please go there and submit information, I've attempted to follow a simple theme throughout.

Okay, it's really quite simple. On the page you want to link from you type the title of the page you want, then stick '[[' on the left of it, and ']]' on the right of it, then save the page. Then click on the link which will have appeared, and it will give you the option of making a new page.

It is like Communism vs. Captialism, or a regulated market vs. a free market.

Timothy[/b], I've been to your island and had a wonderful time. Actually, I'm just now listening to a Concert for 10 Pianos & Orchestra, conducted by Maciej Zoltowski, with the Cyprus State Orchestra. What an amazing sound 10 pianos can produce!

Thank you for assisting with this endeavor from so far away. Isn't the Internet great?

_________________________
One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute. -William Feather

The island's lovely. Didn't know we had 10 concert grand pianos on the island, though, but there we are. Our local Steinway D is in terrible state--they brought it and have given so little care to it it's shameful. In Lefkosia they carry concert grands around at a 40 degree angle on forklift trucks underneath--it looks so dangerously wobbly that I can never bear to look.

The internet's wonderful for things like this--I co-administrate two medium-sized bulliten boards in the USA, our business rents three servers in London which are all administrated locally. I love broadband.

hi, frank, i took a look, and i obviously can't figure it out either. i wanted to edit your grotrian pages because steinweg is misspelled. there is no umlaut (right term?) over the second e in steinweg. it is just a regular e.

Can someone please educate me? What is the point of posting something in a wiki, if any jerk can come along and modify it to something entirely different? My understanding of wiki is that someone could take the time and trouble to post a thoughtful, well researched piece, only to have someone with an ax to grind totally ruin it. Am I missing something? Is there a wiki honor system? does it rely on the law of averages that there are more truthful people than jerks in the universe?

Originally posted by pete: Can someone please educate me? What is the point of posting something in a wiki, if any jerk can come along and modify it to something entirely different? My understanding of wiki is that someone could take the time and trouble to post a thoughtful, well researched piece, only to have someone with an ax to grind totally ruin it. Am I missing something? Is there a wiki honor system? does it rely on the law of averages that there are more truthful people than jerks in the universe? [/b]

Most people by nature are well intentioned, as evidenced by the fact that we have nearly 16,000 members and only a very few jerks.

One of the advantages of a Wiki is that it retains all versions of a thread. If some knucklehead comes in and ruins a perfectly good post, we can roll it back to the version before (and ban the culprit).

One thing that should be done is to get rid of the extra URL stuff so the pages are either "wikipiano.com/article_name" or "wikipiano.com/wiki/article_name" instead of "wikipiano.com/mediawiki/index.php/article_name". This can be done with just a couple small changes, and is probably worth doing before you get any external links.

Also, the piano brands index page should probably be named as a category instead of an article.

As far as seeding the content goes: An outline of all the "expected" categories should be made. Then use this outline to make a table of contents page (either on the main page or linked to from the main page). Then categories and articles can be added from the context of the table of content... Seems like the most effective way of getting content added while keeping everything organized.

For the structure, first you'd have to rename the "mediawiki" folder to just "wiki" or move all the files from the "mediawiki" folder to the root directory (I'm pretty sure there are no places you have to change the directory info, but not 100%).